


The eroding pearl

by Gabriel4Sam



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 10:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17201981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabriel4Sam/pseuds/Gabriel4Sam
Summary: Qui-Gon survived Naboo and Obi-Wan doesn't know what to do with himself, now that his Master has a new Padawan.Hopefully, other people recognize Obi-Wan's talent better than Master Jinn.





	The eroding pearl

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a Padme/Obi-Wan with Obi-Wan staying on Naboo for a time, but I ran into a block after the introduction and wrote again the ending for something more open. Consider it finished, even if I don't refuse myself the hope that maybe one day....

After the ceremony celebrating Naboo’s victory against the invaders, Obi-Wan followed Master Gallia into the palace’s garden. His steps were heavy, not only because he thought she would notify him with his dismissal from the Order, but also because of his exhaustion. He had spend the last five days helping as much as he could. He had sent into the Force people’s pain, when the doctors didn’t have enough pain killers, he had lifted thousand tons of rubbish to clear streets and landing pads, he had searched survivors in fallen buildings, using the Force to locate and extract them with more precision than a machine never could have. 

It was, perhaps, a mercy from the Force: he was too exhausted to really feel the dread of what was to come. 

They found a small green alcove, in a part of the gardens preserved during the battle. Master Gallia seemed tired too, but it was probably more the constant state of a Master of the Council. Four of them, Master Yaddle, Master Gallia, Master Mundi and Master Billaba, had arrived thirty hours before and spend all the night healing people in the hospitals, but a sleepless night was not exactly enough to bring down Jedi of such caliber. 

Perhaps her tiredness was more about the state of the galaxy. Perhaps it was about the dead Sith, whose body the Masters had examined upon their arrival. 

All of that didn’t really concern Obi-Wan. 

He was only a Padawan, and soon he would be no more. 

He hadn’t seen Qui-Gon in the last days. Officially, they were living in the same appartement of the palace but Obi-Wan most of the time caught a little sleep, or more often simply meditated, where he could in the hospitals, when he really couldn’t handle another victim without recharging his batteries a little. Qui-Gon hadn’t contacted him, or send for him. He was probably too busy with his new Padawan and no hurried to confront Obi-Wan. The Jedi Master had already moved one. 

Master Gallia smiled when they sat down on the bench of the alcove. It was small, tired, but still a smile. He remembered why he liked her. 

She was harsh, but never cruel. 

She wouldn’t bring him down more than necessary. 

“I have something for you,” she started, surprising him. He thought about some stipend to help him start a new life, perhaps enough for some civilian clothes and a few days of housing, but it wasn’t credits in her hand. In her palm, a little pearl was shining; it was small, with metal undertone in her color, and it made Obi-Wan take a very careful breath. 

“You know what it is,” Master Gallia said, reading his surprise.

“It’s an eroding pearl. No Padawans had worn one in centuries.”

“Yes, I was sure you knew. You were always more interested in history than Siri. Can you detail to me what you remember about it?”

“They gave it to Senior Padawans who were experiencing a vocation crisis. The pearl is made in a friable stone. They put it at the end of their braid and they went away in the galaxy. It’s difficult to predict when the stone would break, so the time offered to the Padwans for their reflexions was in the hand of the Force. The Padawans lived outside of the Order, searching for answers, and when the pearl broke, they went back to the Temple to announce their decision. To finish their apprenticeship, or to definitely leave the Order.”

“Very good,” Master Gallia praised. 

“Master, I don’t understand. Even if I go away and come back later, Master Qui-Gon won’t take me back more than now.”

“Qui-Gon has ...Let’s not talk about Qui-Gon right now. He’s the headache of the Council from now on, not yours. And I have no intention, when you come back to us, the day the pearl finally crumbles, to throw you away to Qui-Gon. Siri is months away from her trials, no more. When you came back, Obi-Wan, I will be the one offering to bread your hair for the very short time you’ll need to be ready. It is my opinion that you’re so close. You can’t see it right now, with the exhaustion and the last days’ events, but as a member of the Council, I have seen Senior Padawans taking that last step a lot of time. If you can’t believe in yourself right now, believe in my professional opinion.”

Obi-Wan didn’t know what to think. He had been so sure, and now, now...

“Yes, yes, please,” he said, his voice small. He didn’t care in that second. He wasn’t thrown out. 

Methodically, she unravelled his braid and remade it; placing her pearl at the end, after the marks Qui-Gon had put himself. 

“Do I give you my lightsaber?” He asked.

“No, Padawan. You’re a Jedi. One in need of a lot of sleep and even more meditation, but a Jedi,” she affirmed, her voice so sure that something unknotted in his belly. 

“What do I do, now?” 

“You go where the Force pushes you. You follow Its voice, and when the time come, you come back to your family.”

This time, it was credits in her hands, and he took them without protesting. He would prefer to not have to sleep in the street. 

“Enough for a start, but I fear you’ll have to work. You’re supposed to live in the galaxy, closer than any of us,” she said, then to his surprise, she hugged him.

“Thank you, Master Gallia.”

“There is no need to thank me, Obi-Wan. Now go, and may the Force be with you.”

He offered the same ritual salutation and he left the garden. It seemed like his exhaustion had lifted its veil, and it would probably come back quickly, and with a vengeance, but he wanted to use that small burst of energy before it extinguished itself. He didn’t want to go back to the rooms he was supposed to share with Master Qui-Gon, so he went to the man who, those last days, had sent him where he was the most needed.

He went to Captain Panaka, the security forces captain who had followed his Queen from Naboo to Tatooine to Coruscant, and who, after fighting in the battle for Naboo, was now coordinating the efforts of reconstruction. 

“Put me to work, Captain,” Obi-Wan said simply.

“Aren’t you leaving with the Jedi?” The other man asked, without even looking at him, busy jongling four datapads full of datas and aids coming in and out of the room in an infernal ballet. 

“No, I am not.”

This time, Panaka looked at him. He had a piercing gaze, but Obi-Wan had grown up in the Jedi Temple, where people picked thoughts when they didn’t concentrate hard enough to stop it, he wasn’t impressed by a gaze, no matters how piercing. 

“I think I will rather put you to bed,” the Captain said, and as Obi-Wan was blushing, he added: “Not like that, young man. You’re a little too young for me.”

And he put him into bed, or more precisely in the cot he had himself used those last days, in the second room of his office, doing Obi-Wan the courtesy of not asking why the young man wasn’t going back with the Jedi. 

The Padawan slept twelve hours, then shared Panaka’s meal. The man was a better interrogator than Obi-Wan would have thought: he extracted the whole story from him over their noodles, and the Jedi didn’t realized until hours after, when, after a shift of Force Healing in the hospital, he found in Panaka’s office an uniforme to his size. 

“Captain?”

“Eat. Shower. Then put it on and come with me.”

Obi-Wan obeyed, more habits than anything. He had followed orders from Qui-Gon too long, he was sure that would need working on.

To his surprise, Panaka took him to the throne room. The advisors weren’t there. Just Padmé, in her usual regalia, and a few handmaiden. Obi-Wan bowed. In the Force, he could feel the appreciation of the handmaiden right behind him for the way the Naboo’s force uniforms didn’t hide his ass like the Jedi’s robe had done, and his face was as red as his hair when he straightened up from his bow. 

The Queen smiled to him, an expression more human and empathic that she let herself have most of the time when she was in full regalia, and he asked himself what exactly her Captain had said to her.

“We heard you were suddenly free of your time, Master Kenobi,” she said, and he grimaced. 

“Just Kenobi, your Majesty.”

“Well, just Kenobi, Naboo may have use of your talents.”

“The wounded-”

“-yes, your help has been noted and thoroughly appreciated. But we want to broaden your field. Our trip to Tatooine…”

He could see the way she struggled to keep her mask. She was fourteen, and no matters how she could see herself as an adult, Obi-Wan himself, with the privilege of his few years more, understood the difference between thinking himself mature like he had had at fourteen, and the weight of maturity he had gained since. 

“The things  we saw during our impromptu stop on Tatooine opened our eyes to the Naboo’s privileges. We have our problems, of course, and even more since the invasion, but Tatooine…”

One of the handmaiden shuffled closer to her in a silent offer of comfort, and the Queen, with a grateful and discreet nod to her, took courage in her support. 

Later, once they had changed the entire galaxy’s fate, Obi-Wan would remember that part and admire her courage. 

It was crazy, it was without reason, it was a fourteen years old maiden deciding to change everything in thousand of beings lives, in entire star systems. 

That day, everything changed, because Padmé Amidala looked a Jedi on hiatus in the eyes and said: “I want to attack slavery and burnt it down.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr under the same username, come and say hi!


End file.
